


Holding Pattern

by somewhereelse



Category: Arrow (TV 2012)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Future, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-27
Updated: 2017-01-01
Packaged: 2018-09-02 13:23:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,536
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8669323
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/somewhereelse/pseuds/somewhereelse
Summary: Future AU. Nothing ever changes until everything does. Stubborn idiots.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> "Stubborn idiots" could be the summary to everything I've ever written.

She’s standing in his kitchen, slowly stirring the soup on the stovetop and waiting for him to return from the grocery store with that specialty finishing sea salt he’s put on just about everything for the last month. On the way over, she’d asked if he needed anything, but he’d only remembered when her car had rumbled up his driveway so he’d exchanged her keys for a wooden spoon and taken off.

The family’s coming over for dinner. By the family, she means Moira, Walter, Thea, and a newly resurfaced Roy. Roy Harper, alias _The Arrow_ , had been fully pardoned by the newly elected Governor Queen, and it had taken no time at all for the younger man to crawl out of the woodwork and back to the life he deserves.

She, on the other hand, is a different story. She has no idea when she ingratiated herself into the Queen  _family_. Probably the near decade of friendship and partnership, both in the Arrow cave as they clean up the city and in legitimate business as she rapidly climbs the ranks at QC. Except the same can be said of John, and he isn’t such a standard fixture in Oliver’s home that when Moira enters the kitchen, the matriarch placidly notes _Oh, Felicity_ before continuing her conversation.

Soon enough, Oliver will slide back into the kitchen, shoo her away from the appliances, and engage Walter with a quick download of the state’s new economic incentive packages. She’ll engulf Roy and Thea in their usual bear hugs, because she still can’t believe that he’s back or fully express how happy she is that they’re so happy. Then everyone will gather around the island, drinks in hand, as Chef Oliver pulls together the final details of dinner. The man has never used his formal dining room, and she doubts this will be the first occasion for it.

For the moment, Thea sidles up for a quick side hug, depositing a glass of red in her hand, before Walter starts discussing the new Applied Sciences project. She can overhear pieces of the stilted conversation between Moira and Roy, as the woman again tries to figure out what exactly he’s been doing for the last several years without learning anything that might implicate her. Thea saves him with an exasperated  _Mom_ and redirects to her considering a new business investment.

It’s torturous.

This weekly glimpse of what life with Oliver could be weighs on her soul, like the expectant gazes of his family every time they gather.  _Now? Is it time yet? Finally?_ She’s used to shrugging off the silent inquiries with polite smiles.

It’s been years since she and Oliver had acknowledged both the consuming _thing_ between them and his unwillingness to take it anywhere. _For the greater good._  So she had tried to move on and so had he, except no one had ever stuck, and between their day jobs and the night job, it became far too complicated and took too much effort to keep trying.

That’s how they’d fallen into this holding pattern—together _but not_ , married _but not_. She has let so many self-imposed deadlines—before I turn 30, when he breaks up with this one, when _I_ break up with this one—pass by that it feels like breathing underwater.

Sure enough, Oliver sneaks in through the side door beside the pantry. He drops the salt on the counter and doles out hugs and handshakes. When he returns to her orbit, he rests a hand on her hip and leans down for a quick kiss, but instead of tilting her head up to meet him because it would be that _easy_  to obliterate the final barrier, she freezes in place and lets his lips land on her forehead. He slips the spoon out of her hand with a grateful smile, and she retreats to the safety of her friends.

* * *

Oliver takes a moment to observe the scene inside from the French door leading to the kitchen. It’s a beautiful reminder of everything he’s worked for since returning from Lian Yu and everything he thought he never deserved.

He slips in silently using the ninja skills Felicity still grumbles about. After enthusiastically greeting his family, he approaches the blonde at the stove. His sigh is quiet when he grounds himself with a hand on her hip, leaning in to erase any notion of personal space. It would be _so_ simple to tip her chin up and brush his lips against hers. His family would probably react to the unexpected move with applause. Instead, he ignores how she freezes and presses his lips to her temple. Once he takes the spoon from her, she steps away to join Thea and Roy.

 _It’s not the right time or place._ But neither is the Arrow cave with Dig and not-so-baby Sara, or his new governor’s office with its nosy staff, or her Applied Sciences workshop with its glass walls, or any event where they’re each other’s de facto date out of sheer laziness and familiarity.

He’s always regretted putting the brakes on _them_ years agobecause she took him to heart and now he can’t seem to buy more than a moment of non-platonic affection. It’s his own fault, he knows, and if anything is going to change, it’s up to him to make the first move. She’s respected his stupid boundaries so far, and he's learned the hard way that he can’t reap the rewards without putting in the work.

Thea has spent many lunches accusing of him of stringing Felicity along, dangling maybes so that she put her life on hold for him. He likes to think that isn’t true but he knows her process. Before every breakup, she would invite him to dinner, regardless of whether they made it out to a restaurant or stayed down in the bunker. They would talk freely about life, family, how far they’ve come, when he’s going to hang up the bow. After, she would warn him that she wouldn’t be on the comms for the night—and the next day she would be entirely unavailable, wallowing in the breakup that she initiated. He knows that she spends those dinners assessing him, determining if he—the possibility of them someday—is still worth it.

His most frequent nightmare is the day her answer is _no_. 

A touch to his elbow startles him into turning, and by the looks of his mother’s sympathetic expression, he’s spent too long morosely staring into this pot of soup. So he rallies, starts lining up the dishes on the long counter. The kitchen island is informally set; most of the time will be spent wandering around and grazing on the various dishes, rather than the stuffy sit-down dinners of his childhood.

Oliver lets the happy chatter fill up the empty spaces inside him. For now, he has this—good, loyal people who love him unconditionally—and a small smile from the woman he loves.

* * *

Felicity’s stayed on purpose.

He knows because she’d had to move her car from where he’d left it blocking in Moira and Walter and had come back in after the older couple left. His mother had departed after another deliberate look, and he’d ducked his head to avoid her all-knowingness. She’s grown to respect Felicity, if not begrudgingly like her. So much so that years ago Moira had handed him his grandmother’s ring and told him to get on with it already while she could still play with her future grandchildren. That’s about when he seriously started his campaign for governor—and getting Roy pardoned.

Felicity’s sending off Thea and Roy with tight hugs before going back to loading his dishwasher. The couple comes up to him and he’s subjected to more knowing looks and subtle threats before they take off, hand-in-hand and all but skipping down his damn driveway.

He must spend too much time just gazing at her—the midsummer days are long and the golden hour light streaming in from the kitchen windows cast her in an ethereal glow—because suddenly she’s drying her hands and swinging her purse onto her shoulder. After a brief hesitation and an even briefer kiss to his cheek, she steps past him. His hand darts out suddenly and catches hers, quite literally, by the fingertips. She stops in her tracks, and he tugs lightly, leveraging her hand closer to his until he can trace a path to her wrist, up her forearm, to finally curl around her bicep. Her breath audibly catches, and he knows she’s holding her breath like he is his.

“Stay.”

She turns to face him, slowly, by degrees, and the careful look in her eyes—weary and wary— is disheartening. He can feel the weight of her stare assessing him again, wondering if this impending scar on her heart will be worth the experience, and he prays the answer is _yes_ , just this once more.

“Always.”

* * *

She wakes to blinding sunlight. She’s unsure why since, true to her goth hacktivist roots, she keeps her bedroom shrouded in darkness. It takes a long moment to become aware of the quiet grumbles from the hard body underneath her. Then she’s flying upright, clutching the sheet to her bare chest, and scrambling backwards on the enormous bed.

Oliver fully wakes at the tornado of movement and lazily grins at her look of horror. He patiently waits as the events of the night come back to her: family dinner, the long overdue talk, her inadvertent challenge re orgasms in one night, a _ring_. Her eyes land on her left hand, and she absolutely goggles at it until he grabs her hand with his.

She finally settles her gaze on his eyes, and they’re the same they’ve always been—steady and true—but so, _so different_ —content and loving—that she tackles him back onto the bed.


	2. Chapter 2

She startles a little—okay, a lot—when he reaches over to grab her hand. Oliver drops it and withdraws so quickly that she almost calls him out for his Flash impersonation before rolling her eyes at their ridiculous selves. Because last night, in the heat of a moment that was ten years in the making, she agreed to marry him, yet they're still so (physically) reserved with each other that every touch feels like a new line being crossed. She thought they'd crossed every line and then some yesterday, but apparently even these casual touches are a wonderful, new discovery.

Reaching back over the center console, she covers his hand with hers, and the brief smile he flashes her is heart attack inducing. Like she can literally—okay, figuratively—feel her heart bouncing around in her rib cage as he entwines their fingers and squeezes lightly. She gives a muted sigh of contentment and turns her head to peer out at the passing scenery. As much as she wants to watch Oliver right now, the domesticity of the moment and the sheer attractiveness of his profile is overwhelming in the best way.

It hadn't felt real.

It hadn't felt real until they'd called Diggle yesterday evening after realizing he was going to show up to an empty Arrow cave and no explanation. Their friend had been quietly ecstatic, Lyla a little louder in the background, at the news that they'd pulled their heads out of their asses; he'd been not-so-quietly exasperated when they revealed that they'd gone straight to an engagement—a long engagement if she has any say in the matter. After hanging up with John, she'd sent a picture of the ring and zero details to Sara's secure line, to goad the other woman into actually calling, and promptly gotten back a text with a time and date. They'd agreed not to tell Donna until after they'd told the Queens, because her mom, for _whatever_ reason, has Thea's phone number and a complete absence of boundaries.

Oliver's driving them to the Queen mansion now for Sunday brunch, a tradition she's long been aware of but never personally attended. That's about to change. Because she'll be family soon. Not soon enough, based on Oliver's grumpy face when she'd hinted at a long engagement, but earlier than the twelfth of never, which was the previous working estimate. The plan is to spill the beans there—if everyone hasn't already figured it out by Oliver calling Raisa for another setting at the table—and try to keep it low-profile.

Star City's media is already used to seeing them together. They've been the subject of countless speculative and outright false stories over the years, even as boyfriends and girlfriends have come and gone. _Olicity Watch_ , as Thea has dubbed it, is always a guaranteed gossip item when there's a slow cycle. And, once she knocked some sense into Oliver's thick skull about what it means to protect her, they'd stubbornly never let the attention affect the frequency of their hangouts outside the Arrow cave.

But only a blind person could miss the enormous ring on her left ring finger.

It's why she'd strategically stuffed her hand in the pocket of her leather jacket—a gift from Sara _to hint at the badass she keeps mostly under wraps_ —while Oliver had his morning check in with his security detail. The suits hadn't blinked twice at seeing her in the garage. Granted, her car—a sedate black sedan after her red Mini was deemed too conspicuous by the overbearing duo—has been parked in the drive all weekend, but at least she had spare clothes at Oliver's house to spare herself the embarrassment, not that she's embarrassed, of a walk of shame.

She lifts their joined hands to once again admire the ring, ignoring Oliver's arrogant smirk out of the corner of her eye. The thing is kind of pretentious and, in a word, honking. It's most assuredly a Queen family heirloom, which means Moira's signed off on the whole concept, which in turn brings her an unexpected sense of relief. Although it's not exactly to her taste—Oliver had promised a much less flashy, but no less valuable, wedding ring so she can save this one for special occasions—he'd looked extraordinarily satisfied with himself when he'd slid it on her finger. Plus, she can tell the sturdy setting and barrage of sharp angles would cause a lot of damage if she were to ever pop someone in the face while wearing it, a fact that should please Lyla and Sara.

* * *

The movement is mostly subconscious, but he can't stop brushing his finger against the warmed metal of her engagement ring. The past 36 hours have felt like a lucid fever dream, yet Felicity's reassuring presence—something not even the strongest hallucinogens can accurately reproduce as he knows from involuntary experience—confirms that he isn't losing his mind.

It's a little absurd how monumental this simple moment of domesticity feels. He'd always thought this life was unattainable, not just by itself but specifically _with_ Felicity—though to be fair he’d never wanted it with anyone else. As usual, he'd underestimated her, certain that she would have given up on him by now. But after years of patiently waiting out his issues, and working out her own, she's sitting beside him, their clasped hands resting on the gear shift, as he drives them to brunch at his family home.

His heart is excitedly pounding in his taped-together chest.

He steers the car through the round driveway and slows to a stop behind the beat up junker Roy had arrived with. Felicity had offered him a new car—either purchased through her own funds or otherwise _acquired_ if that made Roy uncomfortable—but the man had firmly refused, saying he'd take care of it. Before he can even step foot out of the car, the front door is thrown open, and Thea rushes out, barefoot and wrapped in a blanket from the sitting room. Roy follows at a slower pace, while Moira and Walter hover in the doorway. His little sister wrenches open the passenger door so hard that he worries it won't be able to close again, and yanks Felicity to her feet before bear-hugging her.

Well, secret's out.

Thea attaches herself to his side once she cedes Felicity to the others. He gamely accepts the _congratulations_ , ignores the muttered _finally_ , and rests a hand on the small of Felicity's back to guide her inside the house. She shivers lightly at his touch and tilts her head up to share a beaming smile.

They gather around the smaller table tucked into the back nook of the kitchen. To everyone's relief, his mom has stopped standing on ceremony as much during private occasions. He and Roy make themselves useful and bring over the large plates laden with food, Raisa following behind with the one smaller plate they allowed her to carry. His former nanny lets out an exaggerated sigh of relief—and everyone gets another hearty chuckle at his expense—before enveloping Felicity in a tight hug. Her cheeks are stained with a semi-permanent blush because of how cheerfully everyone accepts the sudden turn of events.

Walter is surprisingly vocal about not waiting another decade for it to be official. Roy justifies it by reminding them that the entire country thinks they've been secretly dating all along; Thea's mumbled _shoulda, coulda, woulda_ is as exactly as unsubtle as she intends it to be. And Moira just pins him with the most knowing look in her motherly arsenal—the one that says _hurry up and give me grandchildren already_. Felicity catches the tail end of that exchange and blushes even deeper.

* * *

John and Lyla meet them for dinner at that rare breed of restaurant that serves good food and is clean and relaxed despite being frequented by families with young children. Little (promoted from Baby) Sara greets them by latching onto her neck before swinging over to land Oliver's lap, nearly upsetting the table in the process. Her recklessness worries and exasperates both Dig and Lyla, but with parents like hers, exactly no one is surprised.

There's a palpable sense of excitement surrounding them that draws more attention than she would like. For a moment, she tries hiding the ring under the table before Oliver catches her hand and stretches it across the table for Lyla's inspection. The other woman nods approvingly, predictably making a note about the damage it could cause. She knows they've caught the attention of the neighboring tables, who are now reconciling the real life image of Felicity Smoak and Oliver Queen and his trusty bodyguard with the internet and newsstand images they've seen for years. But Oliver is so unabashed in his happiness and _pride_ that she forgets about the onlookers and basks in the familiar comfort of her family.

She calls her mom after dinner, mainly because it's only a matter of time before cell phone images of them hit the internet. And Donna Smoak may not know how to send a text message but somehow she's managed to set up a news alert for her daughter's name. She does her eardrums a favor and starts the call on speaker, predicting that she would need to wrench the phone away from her mom's excited squealing. She's not wrong and grins when Oliver winces from across the room. Eventually, Donna hangs up after extracting multiple promises that she can be as involved in the wedding planning as possible. She kind of winces herself at the over-the-top extravangaza that Moira and Donna combined would plan and thinks a little harder about Oliver's suggestion to elope. But it'd be in Vegas—unless Ray marries them, which _hard_ no—and her mom would have her gossip network tattling on them the moment the plane lands.

Apparently having decided that it's safe, Oliver sheds most of his clothes and crawls into her bed next to her. It's another thing they've yet to discuss. If they'll live at hers or at his or get a new place entirely, because she's not delusional and knows that they're both deeply set in their routines and habits; a new everything may be the only compromise that exists.

* * *

He traces the furrow between her eyebrows until it disappears and tucks his face into her neck. Now that he—and she—has given himself permission to touch, he can't stop, only wanting to be wrapped around her as tightly as possible. Felicity readily indulges him, shifts until she's partially underneath him and then wraps her free arm and leg around him. The frenzied lust from yesterday, or rather _always_ , is still simmering under his skin but, for now, it's tempered by the quiet surety that they have forever.

The date suddenly occurs to him because it's honestly secondary to anything else that's been happening; he's surprised no one has mentioned it to them before now. She responds to his soft mumble by running her fingers along on a jagged scar. To neither of their surprise, she's already mapped out and memorized the planes of his torso, just as he has the curves of her body.

Her correction is equally soft yet insistent. " _Happiest_ new year."


End file.
